I've read all the books and I am currently playing blacklist and I gotta say with the dedication that this man put into the game I don't feel like there is a single thing missing. hes put enough into everything that I can actually say this is still sam fisher without ironside. eric Johnson you will never see this comment but very good job man
One thing I never understood about Splinter Cell is how Sam Fisher becomes younger with every game released. He started out as a retired late 40-early 50's to a 30ish youthful male. So weird.
My biggest problem of the new guy... is he sounds younger than sarah, and Eric IS younger than the voice actor who plays sarah fisher.. so Sam is now younger than his daughter....
Ugh, I have nothing against Eric, and personally I loved the new Splinter Cell. I was expecting it to suck ass too but I was very surprised at how they brought back the stealth but my problem with it is you're just not Sam Fisher here. He looks way too young to be Fisher and the obvious one is that Michael Ironside isn't voicing him anymore. If they were going to do this they should have just made a new character altogether.
Both controller and PC controls are good in their own way, the PC control is quite interesting as you roll the mouse wheel to adjust your movement speed for sneaking.
Does anyone know if the mission from the e3 show is on the splinter cell game? An this game worth buyin as I don't know weather to get killzone for ps vita ???
Hey Rev3. Every time you guys have the HP Split commercial, my browser crashes 20 seconds into the video, no matter what browser I'm using. This is happening with all of your videos. Is there anything you can do to fix it, or is this a TH-cam problem?
this is something I wouldn't have expected. this man is so professional about this, its ridiculous. if you had one of the big budget actors (Michael Ironside excluded) do this they wouldn't know what to do with them selves. but this guy really immerses himself in the character that Sam fisher is and that ironside help create.
a game in a franchise i have played for nearly the last decade. When you play a character for so long the little things are the biggest changes you notice. I'm not thinking too much. I'm simply pointing out something in a franchise i love.
Great interview. He mentioned one thing in one of his answer which is how people need to view these voice changes.How many people have played Batman? How many Bonds? It's ok to have change, new talent involved with a character bring freshness.
very tru, I personally don't mind change in video games esp when it's been more than 3 games etc.. chaos theory is prob the best it'll be in the sense of been a solid "stealth" game. but in the stealth action type genre I got no doubts that blacklist will be very solid.
Eric Johnson actually did VERY WELL Michael will be missed but hey Eric did a fantastic job he put in his time and effort and I'm impressed and I've been playing splinter cell since the very first one back in the gamecube good job Eric
Very good observation. What we would have got with comas idea is a tired and depressed Ironside as he tries to remain invested in the game world which he knows he'll be leaving soon. In that context I think it's likely that Ironsides performance would have been sub-par, you'd be asking the guy to make his very last performance as fisher while he lets some younger dude take over. Those kind of things going through Ironsides head would have undoubtedly affected his performance.
Imagine if they had kept Sam Fisher and made Eric johnson a new Splinter Cell. I think there could have been some awesome dialog between those 2 both in single player and coop.
David Hayter voiced Big Boss aka Naked Snake in Mgs3 and Peace Walker when Big Boss was even younger, I think it's fair to say he was replaced for that character.
This is the best way to look at it. Honestly I like it more like this, because I wouldn't want Fisher or his adventures to stop once Ironside eventually left or died. This way he can stay around forever. The only thing that people should worry about is if they kept his dry wit, skills and lethality, which it seems like they're doing in spades.
Just finished the game yesterday on my brother's PS3. And boy... The new voice acting is sooo monotone and dry, even if you don't compare it to Ironside. They have changed the personality of Sam quite a lot too. Reminds me too much of Commander Shepard (Male, Paragon) from Mass effect. I am going to miss the gruff, sarcastic old badass that Sam Fisher used to be. The gameplay however was really good, and because of that, I have mixed feelings about Blacklist. (please excuse any spelling mistakes. English is only a second language to me)
I am very upset Michael Ironside is not reprising his role, but im willing to give Eric a chance. I do also find it funny (and doubt its a coincidence) that both Sam Fisher AND Solid Snake are getting new voice actors for their games this year.
I've never played a single Splinter Cell game. I think I was on a Siphon Filter run when they games were out. Somehow I missed out. Is the original Splinter Cell for PC any good without a controller? I picked it up for a few bucks.
They've been de-aging the character since Double Agent, in 1, 2:PT and 3:CT his age is a constant and he is rendered as such. The sad part about it is that the narrative clearly set him up so that after the events of 4:C he would take Lambert's place and be replaced in the field but Ubisoft was too afraid to pull the trigger.
I own this game right now and from what I've seen isn't a bad game, in fact it looks awesome, but Fisher's voice seems very young as well as his physical form. They should have gotten someone with at least a much more gritty deep voice and a heavy physique. Not bulky, but someone who has slight difficulty doing these things due to his age. The difference between Ironside and Johnson is almost night and day.
I think it's cool I get to play as Eric Johnson. I'm a new Splinter Cell player, started with Conviction. I just finished Double Agent last night. I never even knew who Michael Ironside was until people were complaining about his replacement. Buut, I like the replacement. I first learned of Eric when he played as Whitney Fordman, season one of Smallville. haha
Wow...FYI when I replied to your comment, I hadn't yet watched the video so even Johnson likes the Bond and Batman example. That's kinda weird he said almost exactly what I typed.
i'm willing to give this guy a chance but ironside's voice will forever be #1 imo. The guy seems to have been BORN to be fisher. It blended perfectly with Sam's tough guy persona. but to eric's credit, from what little i've seen, he's doing good.
I'm pretty sure there is something wrong with your guys' video. Every time i watch one of your videos recent'y it skips a lot and the webpage just keeps trying to load. I have to cancel the load for the video to work properly and none of the other videos I watch do this....
I saw this video in my Recommended list, and it read "Sam Fisher's New Voice: Adam Sessler" leaving the rest out due to characte limits. I was like, "Ooh, this seems like a fun parody video of someone posting random Sessler comments over Sam's dialogue."
If anyone is to blame for not having Sam be as sarcastic, it's the writers. The voice actor is meant to fill the shoes of a character the writers create, and maybe they both decided to make him a bit more serious this game. I miss Michael Ironside a lot, but Eric does a really good job.
I think they could've actually managed a prequel here. To me, Eric sounds like a young Michael Ironside, as in Sam Fisher would sound like Ironside at an older age like in the previous games. I guess we have to deal with the fact that there is literally NO continuity whatsoever in this series anymore.
It's justifiable if the replacement is almost as good. In the case of Ironside/Johnson, that wasn't the case. I don't know who Hayter's replacement is, but hopefully it "fits" the role of Big Boss. The fit of a voice actor to a character is often more important than execution.
they shoulda made him sam fishers protege or something... michael ironside's voice is too iconic to just change it and assume everyone would be cool with it.
they are obsessed with the motion capture. my god it's annoying. chaos theory is still golden and I don't think they'll release anything that will top it. it's got incredible graphics for a 2005 game ESP if you play on pc (it looks better than a lot of 2016 games) and the gameplay, voice acting, and character of Sam Fisher is 10x better. I hate when companies ruin their games.
That worked with films being that an actor would age and grow out of the part and it would look silly. Voice acting is not that way. Unless Michael Ironside was 95 years old and could barely speak I could see it being a prudent decision. Hell, they remade the Ducktales game and got the entire original cast back to due the voices and some of them were in their late 80's and they sound amazing.
I kind of wish that they had just left Sam's story alone after Conviction. Eric Johnson's portrayal of the character isn't insulting to the original, but the fact that they place this after Conviction really calls into question what they think is important to the gamer. The gameplay is quite different and I can see the justification in the switch in voice actors. That being said, they should have created a new character.
What I can't understand is why so many devs are getting replacements for voice actors for the sake of full performance capture. I'd much rather have, say, a mocap actor act as Snake and have David Hayter do the lines. It might look slightly worse than full performance capture....but I don't care about that shit...
I am huge fan of MGS but I don't see any issues with Big Boss having a different voice since Big Boss is a different character and sutherland is basically voice acting Big Boss in his forties. So it makes more sense for him to do it then David Hayter since he did Naked and Solid Snake when they were younger. Kojima knows what he is doing. But Ubisoft did the wrong thing with Sam Fisher. Ironside was meant to be Sam Fisher.
Look at it like James Bond. He's been around since the 60s right? Or even Batman. Fisher's an iconic character that people love and want to keep alive. And if you're going to do that, actors will change that play him. Yeah Eric Johnson sounds to young to be 56 years old (that's what sam is) but oh well. We can have years and years of him just like we do with Bond or again, even Batman. He's just a never dying character.
I know, that's what I said. I only responded because you said Big Boss is younger in 5, did you mean younger than Old Snake? I think at the end of the day Kojima got Keifer in for star power more than anything, hopefully he does a great job anyway.
I remember when they got Ironside on board to do the voice work for Sam. It was a big deal at the time to see an accomplished actor taking a video game seriously. Sam was scripted as being and "Older" man who basically came out of retirement and I could actually see Ironside being able to play Sam if it were a live action film. It's a shame they get rid of people and don't give any reasons for fans...
Well thats not all true. If you read the comic books where they came from, theres tremedous evolution of characters. Story arcs where dick grayson becomes nightwig, then returns to become batman when bruce becomes too old, the batman beyond arc where bruce trains a teenager to become batman, those ideas can help open many different avenues.
I think they dumped Ironside so they could prime peoples minds for the tom hardy SC movie. They should've used hardy as the voice since that at least makes some sense. Probably why they made him so much younger looking as well.
As a fan of the series since the first title on the original XBOX, I do miss Ironside's gravely voice, but Johnson did a good job. And, he is Sam Fisher now, so either accept it or stop buying the games, I say.
Honestly this guy could have play a young sam fisher in a prequel game, or better yet the name Sam Fisher could have been made into a codename like "Archer" in Conviction but with "Fisher" as the codename. Well it is too late now, the game is good it is just these thoughts are on the back of my mind when I play the game.
![The Anatomy Of A Fight Scene - Splinter Cell: Extinction [Behind the Scenes]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Vkz9_wpGdWQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Johnson's voice is nowhere near the level of epic that was in Ironside's.
i disagree eric johnson’s voice sounds way better and more “badass”
I've read all the books and I am currently playing blacklist and I gotta say with the dedication that this man put into the game I don't feel like there is a single thing missing. hes put enough into everything that I can actually say this is still sam fisher without ironside. eric Johnson you will never see this comment but very good job man
Is it only coincidence that in Snake's voice actor was replaced in MGS V ?
I think Kojima was like: If Tom Clancy can do it, I can do it too!
jajaa thats true
One thing I never understood about Splinter Cell is how Sam Fisher becomes younger with every game released. He started out as a retired late 40-early 50's to a 30ish youthful male. So weird.
because god is very kind to him😂😃Lucky sam😆😑
Give me the numbers of Sam Fisher's doctors, I wanna know how he got to look younger....by so much.
if sam knows you said this will kill you😂😂😂
They should of just made a new protagonist. It is not right replacing a voice to a character whose voice is iconic.
Brian DelGiudice true that Sam should be like the new Lambert and have the new guy as the next splintercell
Sam fisher was a selling point
Michael Ironside is Sam Fisher.
Actually he's Canadian!
My biggest problem of the new guy... is he sounds younger than sarah, and Eric IS younger than the voice actor who plays sarah fisher.. so Sam is now younger than his daughter....
Sam is more like be his daughter's husband😂😂😂😂
This guys sounds awesome! He was genuinely happy to be there answering the questions, how refreshing and inspiring!
Ironside sounds better in my opinion, i wish they never would have dropped him.
Fascinating interview! And I like that I'm getting a deeper look at games and their creations. Thanks guys!
No one can beat Ironside when it comes to SC. No one.
Zozzle true that
Ugh, I have nothing against Eric, and personally I loved the new Splinter Cell. I was expecting it to suck ass too but I was very surprised at how they brought back the stealth but my problem with it is you're just not Sam Fisher here. He looks way too young to be Fisher and the obvious one is that Michael Ironside isn't voicing him anymore. If they were going to do this they should have just made a new character altogether.
This man is beautiful.
Both controller and PC controls are good in their own way, the PC control is quite interesting as you roll the mouse wheel to adjust your movement speed for sneaking.
Brilliant interview thanks Adam and Rev3Games :)
Great interview thanks for sharing
I skip the conversations between sam and sarah because with his new voice it sounds like they're a fckin couple
😂😂😂😂👍👍👌👌
Great interview Adam! As always.
Hopefully he'll come back in future installments just like Sam Fisher's Italian voice did with Blacklist.
Awesome interview, enjoyed that a lot :)
Great to hear about the process
What a cool guy. It makes me happy how much he enjoyed working on this game.
Does anyone know if the mission from the e3 show is on the splinter cell game? An this game worth buyin as I don't know weather to get killzone for ps vita ???
Very right you are, took the words right out of me :)
Hey Rev3. Every time you guys have the HP Split commercial, my browser crashes 20 seconds into the video, no matter what browser I'm using. This is happening with all of your videos. Is there anything you can do to fix it, or is this a TH-cam problem?
this is something I wouldn't have expected. this man is so professional about this, its ridiculous. if you had one of the big budget actors (Michael Ironside excluded) do this they wouldn't know what to do with them selves. but this guy really immerses himself in the character that Sam fisher is and that ironside help create.
a game in a franchise i have played for nearly the last decade. When you play a character for so long the little things are the biggest changes you notice. I'm not thinking too much. I'm simply pointing out something in a franchise i love.
Great interview.
He mentioned one thing in one of his answer which is how people need to view these voice changes.How many people have played Batman? How many Bonds? It's ok to have change, new talent involved with a character bring freshness.
How to beat around the bush 101 with Eric Johnson
Haven't seen him since Smallville :D. Good to see he is doing well
I finished Conviction.... and didn't even feel like I played Splinter Cell 😕
Blacklist was more comparable in the older games. There is even a mode in which takes away the marks/autokills
+Seargent363 I didn't feel like I played a splinter cell game with blacklist either
even though Ironside was the same voice actor as the rest of the games, blacklist is the first so far that johnson did.
Not only usa but every country that doesn't translate games like portugal and uk will still get sam with eric jonhson voice
very tru, I personally don't mind change in video games esp when it's been more than 3 games etc.. chaos theory is prob the best it'll be in the sense of been a solid "stealth" game. but in the stealth action type genre I got no doubts that blacklist will be very solid.
Eric Johnson actually did VERY WELL Michael will be missed but hey Eric did a fantastic job he put in his time and effort and I'm impressed and I've been playing splinter cell since the very first one back in the gamecube good job Eric
Very good observation. What we would have got with comas idea is a tired and depressed Ironside as he tries to remain invested in the game world which he knows he'll be leaving soon.
In that context I think it's likely that Ironsides performance would have been sub-par, you'd be asking the guy to make his very last performance as fisher while he lets some younger dude take over. Those kind of things going through Ironsides head would have undoubtedly affected his performance.
I want the original
sam fisher voice to come back into the game
Not to mention his names Eric Johnson.. the same as the man who created the song Cliffs of Dover the dudes already a winner in my book
Imagine if they had kept Sam Fisher and made Eric johnson a new Splinter Cell. I think there could have been some awesome dialog between those 2 both in single player and coop.
Well I'll never be happy with the change but I'm confident Eric can keep refining his role as sam and grow into it
David Hayter voiced Big Boss aka Naked Snake in Mgs3 and Peace Walker when Big Boss was even younger, I think it's fair to say he was replaced for that character.
I think they did that on purpose, so new fans coming in can watch the character grow old through future games.
Timothy Olyphant from the TV series Justified is doing video games now?
Eric Johnson was phenomenal as Sam Fisher
This is the best way to look at it. Honestly I like it more like this, because I wouldn't want Fisher or his adventures to stop once Ironside eventually left or died. This way he can stay around forever.
The only thing that people should worry about is if they kept his dry wit, skills and lethality, which it seems like they're doing in spades.
Just finished the game yesterday on my brother's PS3. And boy... The new voice acting is sooo monotone and dry, even if you don't compare it to Ironside. They have changed the personality of Sam quite a lot too. Reminds me too much of Commander Shepard (Male, Paragon) from Mass effect. I am going to miss the gruff, sarcastic old badass that Sam Fisher used to be. The gameplay however was really good, and because of that, I have mixed feelings about Blacklist. (please excuse any spelling mistakes. English is only a second language to me)
troy bakers voice is perfect for everything
Couldn't agree more this was the deal breaker for me.
This is the 3rd Rev3 video to crash my Chrome browser this week. Very strange. It has something to do with the ads trying to load.
That is your own opinion i play all of the game
I don't like this it's not believable
I am very upset Michael Ironside is not reprising his role, but im willing to give Eric a chance. I do also find it funny (and doubt its a coincidence) that both Sam Fisher AND Solid Snake are getting new voice actors for their games this year.
I've never played a single Splinter Cell game. I think I was on a Siphon Filter run when they games were out. Somehow I missed out. Is the original Splinter Cell for PC any good without a controller? I picked it up for a few bucks.
Troy baker for next splinter cell game he is a great fit for the role
I guess Sam Fisher ages gracefully. He doesn't seem to get any older throughout the decade.
David Hayter isnt getting replaced, Hayter is more of the voice of Old Snake and Big Boss is younger in 5.
They've been de-aging the character since Double Agent, in 1, 2:PT and 3:CT his age is a constant and he is rendered as such. The sad part about it is that the narrative clearly set him up so that after the events of 4:C he would take Lambert's place and be replaced in the field but Ubisoft was too afraid to pull the trigger.
One simply can't replace Ironside.
First Snake and now Fisher.
I own this game right now and from what I've seen isn't a bad game, in fact it looks awesome, but Fisher's voice seems very young as well as his physical form. They should have gotten someone with at least a much more gritty deep voice and a heavy physique. Not bulky, but someone who has slight difficulty doing these things due to his age. The difference between Ironside and Johnson is almost night and day.
I think it's cool I get to play as Eric Johnson. I'm a new Splinter Cell player, started with Conviction. I just finished Double Agent last night. I never even knew who Michael Ironside was until people were complaining about his replacement. Buut, I like the replacement. I first learned of Eric when he played as Whitney Fordman, season one of Smallville. haha
i agree but their going for a james bond kinda thing like Sam Fisher will never die.Like his age doesn't matter
i still have Splinter Cell and Chaos Theory so they will always be there
Was his first game. Maybe will get better over time.
Oh my gosh, that's exactly what I was thinking. A new character would of been great!
I second that guy that said he would pay for a redubbed version of the game lol!
Wow...FYI when I replied to your comment, I hadn't yet watched the video so even Johnson likes the Bond and Batman example. That's kinda weird he said almost exactly what I typed.
i'm willing to give this guy a chance but ironside's voice will forever be #1 imo. The guy seems to have been BORN to be fisher. It blended perfectly with Sam's tough guy persona. but to eric's credit, from what little i've seen, he's doing good.
The magic of retcons.
I'm pretty sure there is something wrong with your guys' video. Every time i watch one of your videos recent'y it skips a lot and the webpage just keeps trying to load. I have to cancel the load for the video to work properly and none of the other videos I watch do this....
This dude was on Smallville the first season or two.
I saw this video in my Recommended list, and it read "Sam Fisher's New Voice: Adam Sessler" leaving the rest out due to characte limits. I was like, "Ooh, this seems like a fun parody video of someone posting random Sessler comments over Sam's dialogue."
If anyone is to blame for not having Sam be as sarcastic, it's the writers. The voice actor is meant to fill the shoes of a character the writers create, and maybe they both decided to make him a bit more serious this game. I miss Michael Ironside a lot, but Eric does a really good job.
Lol, it's great how they mention the facial camera then cut to a scene where the acting looks like it's being performed by rubber manikins in game.
So was Michael Ironside, actually.
Thank you VideoGamesGalaxy
or Hannibal Lecter (played by Brian Cox, Anthony Hopkins and Mads Mikkelson over the span of 27 years)
how does that effect your voice?
I think they could've actually managed a prequel here. To me, Eric sounds like a young Michael Ironside, as in Sam Fisher would sound like Ironside at an older age like in the previous games. I guess we have to deal with the fact that there is literally NO continuity whatsoever in this series anymore.
It's justifiable if the replacement is almost as good. In the case of Ironside/Johnson, that wasn't the case. I don't know who Hayter's replacement is, but hopefully it "fits" the role of Big Boss. The fit of a voice actor to a character is often more important than execution.
they shoulda made him sam fishers protege or something... michael ironside's voice is too iconic to just change it and assume everyone would be cool with it.
Damn- great minds think alike. I was thinking the exact same thing.
So let me get this straight. We play an older sam fisher who some how gets a younger voice.
yeah alright. makes total sense.
they are obsessed with the motion capture. my god it's annoying. chaos theory is still golden and I don't think they'll release anything that will top it. it's got incredible graphics for a 2005 game ESP if you play on pc (it looks better than a lot of 2016 games) and the gameplay, voice acting, and character of Sam Fisher is 10x better. I hate when companies ruin their games.
That worked with films being that an actor would age and grow out of the part and it would look silly. Voice acting is not that way. Unless Michael Ironside was 95 years old and could barely speak I could see it being a prudent decision. Hell, they remade the Ducktales game and got the entire original cast back to due the voices and some of them were in their late 80's and they sound amazing.
I really don't care who the fucking voice actor is I just love it when it's a good voice good job hope you move up in the voice acting industry
I kind of wish that they had just left Sam's story alone after Conviction. Eric Johnson's portrayal of the character isn't insulting to the original, but the fact that they place this after Conviction really calls into question what they think is important to the gamer. The gameplay is quite different and I can see the justification in the switch in voice actors. That being said, they should have created a new character.
They could have had Fisher as a mentor to a new guy and he is learning from him and all. Eric Johnson could have voiced him.
splintercell will never be the same without Michael Ironside
What I can't understand is why so many devs are getting replacements for voice actors for the sake of full performance capture. I'd much rather have, say, a mocap actor act as Snake and have David Hayter do the lines. It might look slightly worse than full performance capture....but I don't care about that shit...
I am huge fan of MGS but I don't see any issues with Big Boss having a different voice since Big Boss is a different character and sutherland is basically voice acting Big Boss in his forties. So it makes more sense for him to do it then David Hayter since he did Naked and Solid Snake when they were younger. Kojima knows what he is doing. But Ubisoft did the wrong thing with Sam Fisher. Ironside was meant to be Sam Fisher.
Sessler always have interesting questions
Look at it like James Bond. He's been around since the 60s right? Or even Batman. Fisher's an iconic character that people love and want to keep alive. And if you're going to do that, actors will change that play him. Yeah Eric Johnson sounds to young to be 56 years old (that's what sam is) but oh well. We can have years and years of him just like we do with Bond or again, even Batman. He's just a never dying character.
I know, that's what I said. I only responded because you said Big Boss is younger in 5, did you mean younger than Old Snake? I think at the end of the day Kojima got Keifer in for star power more than anything, hopefully he does a great job anyway.
why are people saying they're not gunna play it because of a voice i mean seriously...
I remember when they got Ironside on board to do the voice work for Sam. It was a big deal at the time to see an accomplished actor taking a video game seriously. Sam was scripted as being and "Older" man who basically came out of retirement and I could actually see Ironside being able to play Sam if it were a live action film. It's a shame they get rid of people and don't give any reasons for fans...
If they wanted to change voice actors, they should have done a new characters story, if not a reboot of Sam Fisher.
Well thats not all true. If you read the comic books where they came from, theres tremedous evolution of characters. Story arcs where dick grayson becomes nightwig, then returns to become batman when bruce becomes too old, the batman beyond arc where bruce trains a teenager to become batman, those ideas can help open many different avenues.
I think they dumped Ironside so they could prime peoples minds for the tom hardy SC movie. They should've used hardy as the voice since that at least makes some sense. Probably why they made him so much younger looking as well.
As a fan of the series since the first title on the original XBOX, I do miss Ironside's gravely voice, but Johnson did a good job. And, he is Sam Fisher now, so either accept it or stop buying the games, I say.
Honestly this guy could have play a young sam fisher in a prequel game, or better yet the name Sam Fisher could have been made into a codename like "Archer" in Conviction but with "Fisher" as the codename. Well it is too late now, the game is good it is just these thoughts are on the back of my mind when I play the game.
Agreed. If they had just made him a different character i'm sure Ubisoft would be getting less shit for all this